It has lasted for 79 years, even surviving banning by the German occupying forces in 1943 by changing its title, but the Dutch Cricket Magazine is, it seems, doomed to cease publication in the face of declining demand and the relentless march of new technologies.

Established in 1931 as the official organ of the then NCB, Cricket has more recently been an independent publication, although supported financially by the KNCB, which subsidised the operation last year to the tune of nearly €10,000.

But with a subscription list which has declined from 1350 a dozen years ago to fewer than 600, the glossy 16-page magazine which appeared weekly during the season and twenty times per year in total has become scarcely viable, and the publisher HS Enterprises was forced to look to the Bond for a more extensive guarantee, to the tune of a possible additional €40,000.

The KNCB’s difficult financial situation, however, means that anything of that kind was out of the question, and the result is that as things stand the next, pre-season issue will be the last.

KNCB Office Manager Alex de la Mar said on Monday that the Bond regretted the magazine’s apparently inevitable demise, but that the rapid decline in the number of subscribers had made such an outcome inevitable.

‘If some enthusiast were to pick things up from here and give it a new lease of life that would be great,’ he added, ‘but it’s hard to see that happening.

‘We’re currently discussing the best way of filling the gap that Cricket’s disappearance will leave, such as setting up a digital newsletter, but there’s no doubt that the magazine will be missed by a lot of people.’

The future of the magazine has been a topic of discussion from time to time at general meetings of the KNCB, along with widespread dissatisfaction with the Bond’s website. With marked improvements in the latter now evident, some will argue that the case for a printed news source has greatly reduced.

One of the magazine’s limitations is that it has never – apart from a very short-lived experiment twenty years ago – attempted to break out of its ghetto as a subscription-only journal for existing Dutch cricket fans. It has never been available through newsagents, which might conceivably have given it a function as a publicity medium for a sport with a painfully low media profile.

So one would like to think that, as the KNCB begins to take its goal of expansion more seriously, the decision regarding the replacement of Cricket Magazine will form part of a wider, coherent media strategy.

De la Mar believes that the most important audience is young people: ‘They’re the future of Dutch cricket,’ he says, ‘and we need to find a way of communicating more effectively with them.’